Hear It First: Three Albums to Spin Before This Weekend’s River Rocks

It’s a mouthful of a title, but damned if Columbia’s Stagbriar, aka musical siblings Alex and Emily McCollum, didn’t create something special on this 2013 album. Blending barbed-wire electric guitar with acoustic instruments like mandolin, banjo and cello, Stagbriar’s music is both blissfully melodic and fraught with tension. There’s a sort of frenzy in their playing that keeps the listener on edge. There’s nothing safe or easily identifiable going on in their music, which pulls from folk, rock and bluegrass simultaneously.

And the vocal harmonies are shiver-inducing. As one might expect of siblings, their voices seem completely fused together. There’s a hair-raising eerie feel to everything they sing. If the best albums create their own world, then throw Quasi-Hymns, Murder-Ballads, and Tales of How the Hero Died into that discussion.

Vincent Harris, Free Times

Full article here.